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November 17, 2005

New model patent crankPosted by Teresa at 08:00 AM * 70 comments

I learn from Ohpurleese and Science Daily that the United States Patent Office has granted Mr. Boris Volfson (of 5707 W. Maple Grove Rd., Apt. 3046, Huntington, IN 46750) a patent for:

A space vehicle (see illustration) propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state … comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a power source, a support structure, upper and lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and a flux modulation controller. A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle’s propulsion. The space vehicle, surrounded by the spacetime anomaly, may move at a speed approaching the light-speed characteristic for the modified locale.

For those of you who don’t speak gobbledegook, that’s a near-lightspeed flying saucer powered by some combination of gravity, electromagnetism, superconductivity, and “quantized vortices of lattice ions.”

This science, it goes boing like the superball.

I keep hearing about the Patent Office issuing absurd, ill-reviewed patents for things that are obvious, or dumb, or already in common use, or which lay claim to way too much territory, or which lay claim to an application of existing technology that’s clearly going to be possible in the future, but which do nothing to help that happen.

Harvey Ross’s claim that he’d patented POD book production irritated me no end. In 1990, he dreamed up the idea of kiosks where a customer could type in the title of a book, access information about it, hit a button, and walk out with a printed and bound copy. Big fat hairy deal. Lots of people had already been imagining arrangements like that: Take one each World Wide Web, broadband connection, library retrieval system, and Docutech printer; whirl in blender until done. His idea was distinguished only by the addition of a point-of-purchase hut, and those were hardly a new idea.

Harvey Ross didn’t do bleep-all to help build the online bookselling world, nor to get sales information piped directly from publishers to the net, nor to develop Lightning Source’s print-and-bind technology. All he did was posit a business using a certain configuration of obvious technologies. Then he designed a GUI and database storage system he imagined would be suitable for it. Again: big deal. This is very like Mr. Volfson’s flying saucer application, where all the work evidently went into designing the hull of the ship.

Last year, Ross slapped Ingram/Lightning Source with a $15 million lawsuit. Their business has no resemblance to his 1990 pipe dream. The court nevertheless upheld his claim, because, as one expert witness testified, “what’s of essence in the patent is a system or process whereby a customer can look at a computerized list of titles and select one for purchase that triggers the retrieval of a file that sets in motion the printing of the book.”

(I wonder whether anyone’s patented the same thing, only it burns the book to a CD. Or the same thing, only it downloads the book into your Palm Pilot. Whee, I’m an inventor, give me lots of money.)

Still, I really didn’t get a sense of the Patent Office’s culpable negligence until I saw that flying saucer patent. Are they brain-dead? Couldn’t they at least have shown it to an undergrad physics major? If the “quantized vortices of lattice ions” didn’t tip them off, the claim of near-lightspeed travel should have done so.

Forget that business about encouraging arts and manufactures; the patent office is awarding patents on the basis of who gets there first and tells the biggest whopper. If they’re willing to grant this nutbar a patent on antigravity, I want to take out patents on the time machine, positronic brain, tractor beam, ansible, light saber, Romulan cloaking device, matter duplicator, and babelfish. Might as well be me as anyone else.

Agreed, Bryan. The connection is that the same patent office that's careless enough to award a patent on an antigravity flying saucer, or on crustless PB&Js, is awarding patents on business technologies that are potentially worth millions.

You know how on many complex web sites they have drop-down menus listing the major destinations within the site and a "go" button which will take you to that destination, either by a server-side app or (later) Javascript?

I invented that. Swear to the wombat god, I invented that in 1995 for use in Crossover's first web-game, Reinventing America (of which I thought I had an online archive, but I can't find it right now). Internally, we called it "the teleporter".

ReUS was hosted on Pathfinder, which was Time-Warner's web site and, at the time, the most-visited site on the web which wasn't an index. Pathfinder picked it up from ReUS and it wasn't long before it was all over the web.

By the standards of internet patents, the teleporter was patentable. If it had ever occured to us to patent it, Crossover could easily be very, very wealthy right now. But it would have been wrong.

There will be a big piece denouncing software patents in saturday's guardian. Unfortunately they lost the distinction between copyright and patent where software is concerned -- it's the distinction between good and bad cholesterols. But I wish I had known about the flying saucer when I was writing it.

Patents should be granted only if the party requesting the patent has already developed the invention. If not, it should be given pending status granting limited protection for a limited time period. Then the patent office wouldn't be so swamped.

The fact that this guy's patent has been in the pipeline for 3 years and hasn't been rejected yet is enough evidence of the patent office's insanity for me. Let alone various other travesties (e.g. amazon's "one click purchase" system -- a patent on a truly obvious system that they just happened to be the first to use, and Eolas's patent on the web browser plugin, another obvious technology which this time had been in use for several years before they filed for it).

Then there are the numerous hoax patents that have been allowed through, such as "method of swinging on a swing" (USPTO # 6,368,227).

Andrew: should have looked on Slashdot. They had this story about a week ago, I think. They're normally quick to find stupid patents, although they don't seem to have ever had an article about the patent on "reality TV" contests for baby adoption, despite the fact that I submitted one to them.

I always thought that a patent could be issued only for detailed devices, not for broad concepts. There I go being naive again. Say... How about my concept that my boss is way out of her depth and shouldn't be a boss?

As far as I can tell, the patent office will issue a patent on just about anything; they rely on the courts to sort out the resulting messes. Pure hell, of course, for anyone who has to defend themselves against a frivolous patent claim.

I do not remember if it’s by statute or custom, but as I recall the Patent Office operates under the assumption that they must grant the patent unless for very specific and enumerated reasons they can’t. And they’re grotesquely understaffed and -funded. Hence the state of affairs. Further information here. (It’s been a while since I poked about in this stuff; this from a link collected for my very first blog post evah.)

I have a whole file of these damn things. Working as a drug discovery chemist, I have to think about patent issues very carefully - people have made mistakes on drug patents that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars. So you can imagine my joy when I see the patent examiners letting stuff like this through. Many people still think that you have to have a working model to get an issued patent, but all you need is money and patience.

Try, for example, the patent issued in 2000 (US6025810) for a faster-than-light radio. The applicant isn't trying to hide the FTL part, either - it's right there in the abstract. The PTO granted it. (That link has details of the patent, but under the wrong number - the number given at the top of the page is for an presumably slightly more useful patent for a portable toilet seat, as it turns out).

All sorts of crank space drives have made it through - US5197279 ("Electromagnetic Propulsion Engine") is a good example, but at least that one seems to stop at lightspeed. And it's hard to make out just what US6404089 ("Electrodynamic Field Generator") is for, but it smells of a free-energy device. There are others.

Another handy device is found in US5280864, a "method for transiently altering the mass of objects to facilitate their transport." Yep, antigravity. Haven't heard of this one being licensed out yet; you'd think there would be a market.

Then there's the infamous "hydrino" patent, US6024935, granted to Blacklight Power, who've been scamming people for years with stories of a supposed lower-energy state of the hydrogen atom. The PTO at least caught on after this, and their follow-ups seem to have stalled. The Guardian recently ran a credulous article on these folks, which wasn't well received by people who've been following the story.

While we're on impossibilities, try US5533051, which purports to detail a method for infinite lossless compression of data files. But bad software patents are a whole other ugly subject.

These are just the ones that make it through. The list of insane patent applications is much, much larger, including incomprehensible 300-page screeds about reincarnation and invisible hormones that you just know were filed in green ink on brown paper towels.

I have been led to believe that the Patent Office's behavior is a kind of civil disobedience. They keep asking Congress for enough money to do their job well, Congress keeps denying them, and in return, because they don't have the money to do the job right, they let everything through, putting the burden on the courts and private entities to sort it out.

Of course, the people who believe that government can't solve problems, i.e., the party that controls Congress, have no interest in fixing the dysfunctional Patent Office, nor is it sexy enough for the opposition party to fight for.

We need a revolution in representation, to get people in office who actually believe that government can actually make things better and are willing to work for it.

Nope, if they let everything through, the volume of these things would go up by at least an order of magnitude. A search for odd phrases here will probably illustrate the point. I think that some of the patent examiners are good at their jobs, and some of them are clueless.

Which makes a story I've heard sound semi-plausible: that some tech companies have submitted multiple copies of the same application simultaneously and waited to see which examiner is assigned to each one. Then they dropped all but the one assigned to the examiner that they knew was a pushover. . .

Yes, but after the burritos had harmonically converged and become super light, could we become more luminous by eating them? (Actually, maybe we could. Did the special spork come with an ignition device?)

My take on this is that this particular application is unlikely to hold up. But if it is granted, or if this category of patent is validated by another successful application, the consequences for creative work are going to be disastrous. The insanity of software patents won't hold a candle to this. Imagine having to hire a lawyer to perform a patent search for you every time you submit a novel manuscript.

I've vaguely considered changing careers, and one of the directions I've thought about is patent-examining. (For the kind of science I know, obviously. Not IT.) It looks like the work needs doing, and ought to be done by someone who isn't an idiot. Does anyone here know if it's satisfying work? Horrible?

When I looked into it a few years ago, the intrusiveness of the background check scared me off. I'm delighted to have found treatment that means my health problems disable me as little as they do, and cautiously relieved that the ADA offered what protections it did. But when I prospective employer asks for my complete medical records and authorization to interview my former mother-in-law, I'm inclined to mutter "nevermind" and slip out the back door unless someone gives me an awfully good reason it's worth it.

The patent office is in no way underfunded. It is one of the few profitable federal agencies- and by law it gets to keep the money it makes.

Part of the problems with patents arise from the fact that the patent office gains no fee from a rejected patent. It is indeed a case where the office assumes that the courts will handle it down the line. It is a poisonous atmosphere for real innovation.

I'd never stumbled across OhPurleeze before. My initial opinion is lowered dramatically by the fact that they seem to be clueless about two-letter "country code" top level domains. Or perhaps they think California is a country.

Perianwyr, you'd think that that would be true, but a substantial amount of the PTO's revenue is diverted by Congress into other spending. There have been any number of complaints about this over the years, but a recent court case held that it was at least constitutional. There have been several bills introduced to stop the practice, but (as noted here), these bills tend to die quietly in committee. Congress loves the revenue stream too much to give it up.

Greg Aharonian, who writes a well-known IP newsletter, makes support for ending fee diversion an acid test for determining if anyone is serious about improving patent quality.

I learned from reading Voodoo Science that they won't grant a patent on a perpetual motion machine (I think it goes something along the lines of "Deposit a working model with us, and if it's still running after a year, then we'll talk"). But I suppose a cunningly camouflaged one might make it through.

Yes, but after the burritos had harmonically converged and become super light, could we become more luminous by eating them? (Actually, maybe we could. Did the special spork come with an ignition device?)

A friend of my wife's works for the patent office as a lawyer, as does her husband (if I'm remembering this right). I don't know about underfunded, but they were understaffed, and I vaguely recall there being some kind of asinine system whereby they were rewarded for the number of items they got through in a given month -- and also by how much improvement they showed in getting through items from month to month.

In essence, somebody who comes in lazy and gradually picks up his pace gets rewarded, while somebody who comes in working her hardest and gets better but not faster doesn't receive the same bonuses.

Under those circumstances, the patent office is putting in place systems specifically designed to encourage the approval of idiotic patents.

(Mind you, this was about four or five years ago over a very nice meal in a very loud restaurant, and I could be remembering some elements wrong. Both the husband and wife seemed very sure about this, and very cynical, and laughingly happy that at least a few patents hadn't gotten through.

I have several friends who work for the Patent Office, and therefore have no doubt that it is collectively as uninformed and blundering as we all imagine. The system rewards them for approving patents quickly, not carefully.

Yes, but after the burritos had harmonically converged and become super light, could we become more luminous by eating them? (Actually, maybe we could. Did the special spork come with an ignition device?)

And no one's even (explicitly) touched upon some of the worst abuses: patents of business processes. Historically, these have been deemed inherently unpatentable - but in the US, a Federal Judge disagreed, which has led to a flood of BS patents being issued.

Those trendy 'ceral bar' restaurants? Some jackass has taken out a patent on 'mixing one or more branded breakfast cerals in a bowl and then adding milk' as a business process and is now in the process of suing independently-owned ceral bars - including ones that opened before he even filed his application. His patent is so broad, he might be able to file violation claims against companies using touch-screen kiosks for customers to place their own orders. McDonald's was experimenting with that years ago...

And don't get me started on Amazon's newly issued patent for web-form-based user-submitted reviews.

Serge asks how the European system works. From my understanding it is very similar, with a few small differences:

* Fee is not refundable should the application fail, which means no incentive to pass patents for the patent office.

* As well as the "novelty", "utility" and "non-obviousness" requirements of US law, we also have a requirement that patents make a contribution to the state of a "technical art" and produce a "technical effect" (or solve a "technical problem"). This rules out most business method patents, storyline patents and other similar nonsense. It is also believed, because of how courts have interpreted it in the past, to rule out a large number of software patents (although not all).

Steve Eley wrote: Imagine having to hire a lawyer to perform a patent search for you every time you submit a novel manuscript.

Imagine having spent a year of your life writing a novel manuscript, only to find out that you can't sell it to anyone because the core premise is patented by someone you've never heard of. It would probably be advisable to make those searches before you start writing.

I just did some research for a company to test their dietary supplement for its effects on weight gain in a particular species of a particular age and gender under particular environmental conditions. I produced adequate data; in addition, because I am such a scathingly brilliant scientist (yeah, right) I found that the product caused a small but statistically significant change in one particular aspect of one particular kind of immune cell.

They are now applying for a US patent that states this product will have a positive functional effect on *all* immune cells in *all* mammalian species of *all* ages and genders....and they'll get it. No proof required to expand your claims once you've got a bit of data showing one claim. (In case you can't guess, I've got issues with this.)

Has anybody patented the concept of onomatopeia? If so, Teresa's comment about science going boing means she just stole someone's property. How does it feel to be in the same league as criminal mastermind Lex Luthor?

http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/uspto-epodiff/ has a summary of the difference between US and European patents.

I believe there was legislation pending at some point to move the US towards the European standard of "First to File" rather than "First to Invent."

The former is undoubtedly simpler bureaucratically, but the latter make much more sense to me. If you can document that you came up with the mechanism to solve a given problem first, why should someone else have the patent merely because that person got to the patent office first? (I suppose "First to File" encourages filing rather than keeping the details of your process as a trade secret?)

FranW: "They are now applying for a US patent that states this product will have a positive functional effect on *all* immune cells in *all* mammalian species of *all* ages and genders....and they'll get it. No proof required to expand your claims once you've got a bit of data showing one claim. (In case you can't guess, I've got issues with this.)"

Ah, but they won't have enabled any of that, will they? Nor will they have taught how to do any of it, unless they get lucky and the procedure you found works without modification for all the other things they're claiming. Those are two key requirements for a patent claim to stand up. You can claim all sorts of things; defending them is another matter.

A competent examiner (which as this thread shows you, cannot be assumed) will restrict those claims during the application phase. Even if some bozo grants them all, though, they won't hold up against someone who's really motivated to move in on them. This stuff will only scare off the faint of heart. Not that we all wouldn't be better off without all this gibberish in the patent system, mind you. . .

TC: "I believe there was legislation pending at some point to move the US towards the European standard of "First to File" rather than "First to Invent."

That's still going on, although who knows when it'll ever become law. I don't see it happening soon, but I feel pretty sure that eventually we'll get around to the change.

There are good arguments on both sides, but it's important to realize how rarely a patent fight comes down to invention date. The "first to invent" rule seems to favor the underdog, but it only favors the underdog who keep meticulous, witnessed records. Many of them don't.

And most large US companies work at least partially with a first-to-file mentality anyway, since that's what you need for protection in the rest of the world. Priority for applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which can cover a huge swath of the globe, are strictly by filing date.

I don't have the time or money to do this myself, but I bet if you filed a patent for a bureaucratic structure intended to determine and record precedence on inventions, and then sued for infringement, this idiocy would get straightened out right quick.

For extra credit, one could also patent a governmental structure in which representatives are chosen from multiple geographic reasons based on a majority of votes from each region. It would count as a business process, as long as you included the bit about lobbyists.

It would seem to me that "fees nonrefundable in the event of rejection" would be an easy pass -- the legislature can't have a problem with simply getting more money, it'll reduce a lot of the frivolous patent filers (swinging on a swing -- you can't tell me he *planned* that to pass..), the PTO can hire many more examiners, and the incentive to pass everything goes way, way down. Why are they faffing around with first-to-file versus first-to-invent when there's a much bigger and more beneficial change that can easily be made?

In Europe, the "technical invention" bit mainly protected us from the deluge of idiocy the US experiences... until a few years ago. With increasing pressure on standardisation of IP legislation across the world (don't we all want to live in a magical "Information Society"?), the dams are creaking. You can google the recent furious battle at EU level on software patentability for more info. In my opinion, if we really want to protect the little guy we should:

strip corporations of any entitlement to IP of any kind, referring to physical living people

Note that the filing fee and examination fees are nonrefundable if the patent is rejected.

However, the big money is in the issue and maintenance fees, which of course are only paid after the patent is granted.

On the plus side, those maintenance fees allow patents that aren't worth ponying up an extra $900 ($450 if you qualify as a "small entitiy") lapse after only 3.5 years. On the down side, this creates a monetary incentive for the patent office to issue meaningless patents.

Actually, although I can clearly see the societal harm caused by a patent office that issues overly broad patents or patents on obvious ideas, what's the societal harm in issuing meaningless patents, or patents on devices which cannot exist?

Actually, although I can clearly see the societal harm caused by a patent office that issues overly broad patents or patents on obvious ideas, what's the societal harm in issuing meaningless patents, or patents on devices which cannot exist?

A patent on an impossible device allows a scam artist to claim a certain level of respectability. To people who don't know what really goes on in the Patent Office, it says "The government has looked at this, and found it worthy."

That's why scam artists are constantly trying to find new ways to patent perpetual motion machines, and why scam fighters are constantly working to block those patents.

Air in the form of human breath is no longer simply air. Breath is present when we laugh and cry, whisper and shout, sing and sigh. And once captured, it can be a powerful reminder of those we long to be around. In short, Breath Capture™ preserves not only the memory of someone, but who they are. So wherever you go, they’ll always be close.

Wouldn't it be easier just to get them to urinate into a sample jar? I mean, it makes about as much sense.

The PTO is scamming inventors i documented a idea the stole the 10$ dollars and gave me blank forms with my name on it took my designs they are frauding inventors and patent are no good they just take your money and give you the same patent others have.

Until today i had always thought that if i wanted to patent any of my idea s that id have a very very defined idea to back it up even if what i had was sufficent for any common person to understand . . . . . Shit wow . . . Cant believe such crap can be patiented

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